Introduction

In the dramatic accounts of the history of the Second World War in North Africa, it is often the famous meeting of Charles de Gaulle, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, General Henri Giraud, and Mohammed V at Casablanca that takes the central stage in the memory. Continual reference to the meeting of the major European leaders in Casablanca is indicative of a major historiographical lacuna related to how the war is written about and generally remembered. Very often the history of the empire, its peoples, and how the war affected them has been outside the lens of European historians of World War Two. The important effort de guerre, as French colonial authorities called the contributions made by Moroccan colonial troops, has been largely ignored. Beyond the troops, little attention has been given to how the war altered the everyday lives of the popular classes and, more specifically, the peasants who formed the backbone of the colonial army. How the war affected the overall political, economic, and social conditions in Morocco remains unexplored. Unfortunately, “conventional” Moroccan nationalist historiography has also left these kinds of questions unanswered, because the story of the colonial soldiers does not fit neatly within the dominant narrative of resistance to French colonialism.

This chapter examines the war in the context of Moroccan colonial history and illustrates the place of empire and its peoples in the remembrance of war. My goal is to unpack the different layers of the story ofWorld War II in Morocco. First, the surrender of French forces to Nazi Germany and the armistice agreement in June 1940 represented a major blow to the prestige of the French nation and the glory of the French military. As a result, the empire and its colonial troops became a major symbol for the rejuvenation of the French army and its nation. Colonial troops became the embodiment of the French nation and of la France combattante.